Not to brag or anything – but my garden this year was pretty good. Sure I had a couple of weeks when it was completely out of control, but for the most part it looked almost like everyone else’s. SCORE!
When I would hear that people would say that gardening was so relaxing I just couldn’t get it in my brain cells that this could even be possible. Seriously, even walking past the garden in the years past would make my belly hurt. I would do the ‘I’m not looking’ thing and just keep walking. The reason that I would have a garden was to just get fresh food. And that was it.
But since I’ve been able to keep up this year I was almost at that relaxing stage that people talk about. Yea, who would have thought right? When you can actually walk into your garden and be walking on dirt instead of a carpet of weeds – well let’s just say it makes you feel so much better. I had a chance to clean it up really well the 4th of July weekend, and it has stayed pretty much in control since then.
So what did I all get out of the garden this year so far? Well I had snap peas, onions, a couple of different peppers, lettuce, parsley, chives, cherry tomatoes, and regular tomatoes. Now the peas, onions, and lettuce are gone but the rest is still in the garden.
And if you’re wondering if I learned something this year I’m here to tell you that I sure did! Do you know if you take a huge pile of lettuce that you want to clean and soak it in water, lets say for about a day and a half, that it turns to slime? Yea, literally slime! I was so excited because I cleaned out the remaining lettuce out of the garden and I had a lot! I also just couldn’t find the time to get it cleaned and so I had a great idea to soak it until I could get to it. Well to my defense it was pretty dirty and this was a great way to get it cleaned. When I finally got back to cleaning it and pulled it from a glass container, it was like a huge slime ball that was about 1/3 the original size. It was gross! So the take away on this is to not cut your lettuce UNTIL you have time to actually clean it. I pulled it all out of the soaking container and threw the wad of lettuce into the chicken coop to see if they would like to eat it. I haven’t checked back with them since 🙂
This is the before picture of the rest of my lettuce. Now it’s chicken feed!
OK, so here is some pictures that I took of the garden. The first one is some pictures of some of the harvest so far.
Some snap peas and lettuce
First tomatoes of the season
The picture below is an awesome picture if I say so myself. It’s a picture of a tomato plant that I started in the greenhouse by seed. It’s literally one plant that was getting so big that I had to reinforce the plant with a second extra sturdy cage. So where I’m standing is literally in the middle of the two cages holding up the plant. And to top it off it’s not only a show plant but it actually has tons of tomatoes on it. Superstar!!
This is one tomato plant!
And the photo of the day is this frog (or toad?) that I couldn’t get away from. He kept hanging out wherever I went. I was just trying to keep track of him so he wouldn’t become garden fertilizer! I don’t think my Niece would forgive me if she found out that I stepped on him.
My garden helper